In what could possibly be the funniest baseball blog post of all time, Flotsam Media comes up with a statistical formula to measure that most Ecksteinian of descriptions: gritty.
After Tim McCarver’s month-long David Eckstein sploogefest that was October 2006, a serious investigation into ‘grit’ was long overdue. Despite the penchant of sportswriters and broadcasters to throw the term around willy-nilly, I was hard-pressed to locate a firm definition of grit in the baseball sense. Using lots of laptop science stuff, I think I’ve improved the definition, which isn’t really saying much, since there wasn’t one to begin with.
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RESULTS
Across 13,249 player-seasons, the data appears to have a relatively normal distribution. The data shows a range of about -50 to +50 with one outlier at -90.011 (see below), and a mean and median extremely close to 0. These numbers are promising for the prospects of GRIT as a statistic, as they suggest that the average player is neither extremely gritty, nor extremely talented.
Check the link for actual GRIT statistics. I believe this is a nerdy mcnerderson statistic that people like Joe Morgan could get behind. via Fire Joe Morgan.
